This summer, researchers tested two "hedgehog" robot prototypes, to get an idea of the machines' potential to explore space locations inaccessible to conventional rovers.
Wheeled robots like the car-size Mars rover Curiosity work well on planetary surfaces, but in the low-gravity environment of a comet or an asteroid, such machines would be in danger of floating away or snagging on the rough terrain, NASA officials said.
That's where the Hedgehog comes in.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
